Holy Paladins should receive the Exorcism spell mostly as it existed in Dragonflight, but converted slightly in two ways:
- No cooldown.
- Costs three Holy Power to cast.
In an ideal world, this ability would completely replace Shield of the Righteous for Holy.
My reasoning is multifold:
- Shield of the Righteous is already different between Protection and Holy (with Prot having no GCD interaction, and Holy incurring the GCD). These two spells have the same name, but are not the same ability “used differently.” There is no need for the ability to be common to all three Paladin specs.
- Exorcism would provide Hpals who prefer a casting playstyle the ability to utilize their Holy Power for damage while at greater range.
- The use of Denounce in PvP talents shows there is a desire to have a useful single-target damaging ability for Holy Paladins
- AOE damage options would be retained, as Dragonflight’s version of Exorcism also did AOE damage (which we would otherwise lose if SotR disappeared) when hitting a target within your Consecration circle. As it just so happens, we also have a talent (Righteous Judgment) to cause Judgment to very often cast a Consecration circle at range.
- Lightforged Blessing could easily be altered to work with Exorcism, as it currently does with both SotR and Divine Storm
- Blizzard has, to date, STILL not addressed a very legitimate pain point regarding Holy Paladin itemization. We continue to see 2-handed intellect weapons drop for us, which if used will completely lock us out of our sole damaging Holy Power ability. There are lots of options to remedy this, but Blizzard has, as yet, not chosen any of them. SotR still requires a shield, we still get 2-hand drops, and we still have no damage options we can use without a shield. Exorcism neatly solves the problem.